Patchwork

Shanil, who was standing
outside her parent’s detached house talking to one of the boys in the
neighbourhood, swiftly looked up at the sky blue MG Metro driving past. The 4-door car stopped around the corner just
past the dark green curly hedge that belonged to the next-door neighbour. Before Shanil could comprehend who had called
her Jade swung open the door and jumped out of the car, joyfully jogging to her
older sister.

“Here she comes!” Smoke grinned. “What do you want?” he
smiled.

Jade just ignored the words of the lanky boy and grabbed
Shanil by her arm and tugged; “Look...” she seemed to be very excited for some
reason. Without a word, Shanil followed
Jade to the car, filled with familiar dark handsome male faces. Recognising them and realising she had never
actually exchanged any words with these people, she smiled shyly. They were Jade's secret friends. Jade crept out most nights to meet these
nocturnal friends knowing quite well that one day the dangerous game she was
playing would definitely drown her.

“You know these guys, don't you?” Shanil stared into the car slightly leaning
forward and trying to comprehend their features. She nodded nervously, knowing quite well that
she always found it very difficult to nod.
Everyone introduced themselves: Lakhan nicknamed Nigs who was in the
driver’s seat, Riaz otherwise known as Rudeboy and Malik known as Singha who
were both in the back seat. The young
man called Raj seated in the passenger seat whom Jade had told her so much
about was nicknamed Rebelz. Shanil
always wondered why Asian lads had given themselves stupid western names that
had no meanings or resemblance at all.

“Hi,” Shanil spoke shyly.

“Well, don't you think he looks like Kash?” Jade exclaimed. Kash was the boy who lived next door to Jade
and Shanil in a very large detached corner house with two front rooms which
stood out in the distance because of its two distinctive monkey puzzle trees on
either side of the tarmac garden. The
trees’ branches like spiky green arms with elbows and fingers reaching for the
sky gave the house its own uniqueness.
Everyone knew that house as the two monkeys making it easy to direct
anyone who needed to find Mr and Mrs Dhillon's house. Shanil had always wondered why these trees
had been named monkey puzzle trees, as there did not appear to be any
resemblance.

“Yeah,” she agreed, even though she did not think he looked
anything like Kash.

“This is Raj, I mean Rebelz,” she told her. Shanil looked at him and smiled sweetly. “Everyone, this is my older sister Shanil,
but she likes being called Shez,” Jade proudly introduced her older sister.

“I know you, you used to go to my school,” Rebelz said
smiling back.

“Yeah, I know,” she said even though she did not recognise
him from school at all. There was
something about Rebelz; she did not quite know what it was that attracted her
to him. Maybe it was his wavy long hair,
but all of the lads in the car had long hair apart from Singha. Maybe it was the way he smiled and that
twinkle in his hazel brown eyes. She
knew one thing, she definitely wanted to see him again.

“I'll catch you later, another time maybe.” Rebelz smiled once again. Shanil did not speak much and smiled at the
rest of the young men sitting in the car.

“Yeah,” Shanil smiled back.
She slowly walked away towards Smoke who was standing in the driveway
talking to Jade.

“Jaydesh!” Nigs
called out, “Catch you in ten minutes round the corner.” As he said that, Shanil turned and looked to
get the last glimpse of Rebelz before the car drove away.

“Well... You know I hate being called that name. My name is
Jade to you! Remember I’m precious, man!”
Jade smiled. She had been named
Jaydesh Kaur Dhillon by her parents, but refused to answer to it by anyone with
the exception of her parents.

“Jaydesh, who was that?”
Smoke interfered putting a sound effect upon her name. “I’ve never seen him in your bad boy posse
before.”

“Shut up guys! That
guy was nice… Whoever he was,” Shanil spoke in a dreamy tone.

Jade and Shanil left Smoke on his own while they went into
their house. Shanil peered at her
digital wristwatch, telling her it was 25th June 1990 and the time
said 9:15 pm. It was a mild evening as
the two girls walked in through the alleyway leading into their huge back
garden full of bushes, shrubs and flowers.
Slowly the girls sneaked in through the back door.

The sun was getting ready
for bed as it began to pull its soft red, pink and orange blanket across the
sky. Jade’s plan had worked as she could
see that her older sister had fallen for Rebelz. Shanil would not stop talking about him. Jade needed her sister to back her up while
she sneaked out. By introducing Shanil
to the gang it was a perfect way to get what she wanted and keep her sister on
her side.

Jade explained to Shanil
that she would return home late and that there was no point in waiting up for
her. “Don't worry about Rebelz, I'll fix
something, until then just keep dreaming...”
Jade teased her as she walked through the back door. Shanil wished she could stop Jade from this
outrageous behaviour. Each time she
tried she never succeeded as her little sister overruled everything she
disagreed with.

Shanil just smiled, “Tell Smoke to go.”

Jade closed the door
behind her. At that precise moment
Shanil wished she had gone with her.
Jade was an independent young teenager who did not like being told what
to do by her older brother and sister.
She lived a very different life compared to an ordinary
fourteen-year-old Punjabi girl. She had
met these young men while she waited for netball practice at school one
afternoon. About three months later, she
had decided to mention them to her older sister. Jade was living on the edge. She knew that if her parents caught her going
out with a bad boy, it would cause many problems; let alone being caught out at
midnight cruising with him.

Shanil went into the living room, sat in front of the
television with her younger brother Josh and decided to watch a movie. Josh was a typical British-Asian younger
brother; he always teased his sisters.
He was a carefree person and did not show any concern about where his
younger sister went at that time of night.
He had a round face and wore a cheeky grin most of the time; he had big
round glasses representing his bookworm
characteristics and thoroughly enjoyed studying. His black turban sat on his head like a hat
that covered his long broken hair which he tied up into a topknot on his
head. Josh did not practise the Sikh
religion; he only wore his turban because his parents had convinced him that
having uncut hair was an expectation of his faith being a Sikh. Occasionally he wore his hair like a
head-banger, wavy and messy, like it had not been combed in weeks. Shanil always wondered why Josh didn’t take
much notice of and interest in his little sister because had he been like any
other Punjabi brother he would have probably broken his sisters’ legs if he’d
found her with a boy in the middle of the night. However, Shanil considered her sister very
fortunate and privileged in having such a carefree brother; the little sister
was living an extremely dangerous and outrageous life. Her parents were very strict and community
minded; she knew that the day she got caught would not be worth living.

After the movie Shanil had slipped into bed and had fallen
asleep right away. She hadn’t even
noticed when Jade had returned home.

Shanil was an ordinary British-Asian Sikh girl with a
difference; she had been born with a slight disability, cerebral palsy. Her disability did not exactly stop her from
doing things, it just made her feel like she was not able, making her somewhat
lazy. She walked awkwardly, appearing
very clumsy and unstable. Many people she
met on the streets thought she was a drunk or on drugs.

Her parents and family were supportive and over- protective
of her. All her life she had been kept
in a comfort zone but she had not been spoiled.
She knew her father had loved her very much especially during her
childhood. Her father would sit up with
her for hours praying to God in the hope that
his daughter would be cured of her disability. She had a good family and loving
relatives. The most important factor the
family lacked was the ability to communicate and interact as a family. With everyone working or at school, there was
never any time left to discuss the day’s activities or problems with one
another. By the time evening fell Mr and
Mrs Dhillon were so tired they just about had the energy to eat their evening
meal and go to bed, leaving the children up to their own devices.

Shanil was born in North
East India, in the state of Uttaranchal in a little village called Kara Jothi,
at the foot of the Himalayas near the River Ganges. She was the first-born child to her parents. Her parents were married just nine months
before Shanil was born. It was a cold
Tuesday 8th December 1970 the day she was born. All relatives gathered around the Dhillon’s
clay house in anticipation waiting for their first grandson to arrive. When they realised a girl had been born, all the
planned celebrations diffused into a saddened atmosphere. This little baby was not a normal baby, she
had a thick layer of yellow jaundice covering her tiny skinny body. Her grandmother tried to wash off the colour
assuming that it was just the colour of her skin. She moved very awkwardly with uncontrollable
spasms, nobody knew what was wrong with her.
There were no doctors in the village and even the non-medically trained
midwife (desi dhayee) did not know what was wrong with the newborn
child. Preety, her mother, was only
sixteen years old and was unaware of what to expect and do during and after
childbirth. She had to accept everyone
else’s word for it. There was so much
sorrow and distress on the day Shanil had been born. The baby was born with so much negativity in
the villagers’ eyes giving her mother no enthusiasm to look after her alien
like child. As the news spread around
the village relatives came to witness the strange baby, cursing her, saying all
kinds of terrible things about the newborn and her mother.

“Oh my Goodness, what has
she given birth to? That new bride from
Punjab has not brought the family any luck, has she? What kind of kismet has she come with
to the Dhillon household? That child is
not a child, but a burden and unnecessary weight to the family. Our poor son, Gurdev, will have to live with
such a woman who produces such alien like children.” Her mother had hoped to be happy in her
marriage; this child had brought nothing but guilt, sadness and depression upon
her.

“Throw it into the river;
nobody will want to marry it when it grows up. You won’t even notice after a couple of weeks
that you ever had it. You’ll have more children, hopefully better
than that one, so you must look forward to them. Just imagine all the distress you will have
to live with, if you keep it. Just think you’ve had a miscarriage… and
you’ll be ok.” They advised her
mother. With this negative attitude the
family and friends were pressing on, her mother almost threw her little
helpless child away like a piece of rubbish.
Society and culture had her believing all these lies about her baby; she
almost hated and neglected this child for being born to her. This was the way of life in the uneducated
villages of India. It was common for
mothers to discard their newborn children if they did not want to keep them;
especially if it was female and was born abnormally like Shanil.

It was her father who
spoke, saying, “No! Nobody is touching my daughter. She is a part of me, Gurdev Singh. God has given her to me for a reason. I will respect the will of God. Nobody will do or say anything bad to my baby
or Preety, my wife. I hope I have made
myself clear. Her name is Shanil Kaur
Dhillon,” he proudly announced. Gurdev
had returned from England to marry and settle back home in India after living
and working in England for five hard years.
He was the oldest of two sons and three daughters; he wanted to stay in
India to cultivate and develop his many acres of land which belonged to his
father. He would be entitled to inherit
a share of the land after his father’s death.

All the family took turns
to take care of Shanil until she was a year and a half old. She still could not walk or talk and was very
slow at picking things up. People still
did not know what was medically wrong with her.
Her neck dangled like a ragdoll; she could not support her head at
all. Her awkward movements came like
electric pulses waving her limbs like puppets.
Preety asked her husband, “When can we go from here? This is not our home. Our home is where you came from in
England.” Preety repeated this mantra
day after day like a stubborn child.
“Please we must get out of India.
Your dad is in England so why can’t we go to live with him there? This village is really making me ill.” Preety visualised a perfect life in England
full of glorious things and saintly people.
“Believe me, our life is meant to be in England. Just think your Shanil might get better over
there and we can take her to the doctors and get her checked and seen to and
she will get well.” Preety finally
convinced her husband to believe that she was right and he was wrong to live in
India. It was not only her dream and ambition
but many of the people in India longed to live abroad and migrate to the
western world for a better quality of life.
Then in 1972 Shanil and her parents, along with her grandfather arrived
in the heart of England, the Black Country, to begin to live their perfect
life.

As time had gone by,
Shanil began to learn and grow up. She
realised that the world around her was not like the world she had lived in the last
twenty years of her life. The thought of
this made her want to go out and explore but this was virtually impossible for
her. The protection from her family and
the limitations her disability caused were the main reasons she could not
explore the world. During her years of
schooling, she had not been able to walk to and from school because she and other
students with disabilities had to be escorted by taxi for their own safety as
well as the school’s insurance policy to protect their vulnerable students from
any harm. Many of the children at school
thought she was very lucky getting a taxi but to her it had been like a prison
sentence. She longed to walk with her friends
and do the things that normal children did; like going
for detours and getting involved with other children and messing about at the
school back gates. At this inquisitive
stage her ‘ordinary’ Asian lifestyle began to
change.

The morning sunshine awoke Shanil. She looked at her alarm clock on the bedside
table, it was only 6:16. The alarm had
been set for 7. Jade was asleep next to
her with a sweet smile on her lips.
“She's had a good night,” Shanil said to herself. Getting out of bed she reached for the radio
to switch it on. It was no use sleeping
now because she knew if she closed her eyes again she would fall into another
timeless sleep. The one thing she did not
like about this kind of sleep was being woken up in the middle of a lovely
dream. She dressed and ate her breakfast
before everyone. Then kindly she brought
up a cup of tea for her mom and her sister.
It was extremely difficult for her to carry two mugs of tea up the
stairs. Still she managed by bringing
the stainless steel teapot and two empty mugs and poured the tea at their
bedside table. Her father always left
the house at first light to open up the store and get the morning newspapers
sorted and delivered. Josh never drank
tea.

“Well? How was it?”
Shanil sat next to her tired sister.

Taking the cup of tea and
giving quite a large yawn, she smiled. “I'll tell you something, you missed a
great night. Oh yeah, Rebelz wouldn't
stop going on about you.” Jade sat up in
bed.

“You what?” Shanil
said with a sudden jerk hardly believing her ears. “Don't be daft, Rebelz doesn’t like
me....” She felt her heart beat faster.

“You wouldn't like to bet on it,” Jade smiled and carried on
with her story about the night. Shanil
heard not a word of her sister’s so called exciting story. All she could think about was Rebelz, how
could it be true? ‘Jade's having me on,’
she kept thinking. She wanted to find
out but she did not quite know how. She
wanted to believe Jade but swore at herself, telling herself it was ridiculous
and absurd that a young man could like her in that way. She also despised the thought of getting hurt
just as she always did. A thought
wandered through her mind many-a-time that maybe Jade was using her as a
cover-up for herself. Shanil being
extremely naive and foolish had fallen into the trap. She knew very well all the times that Jade
had gone out with her dangerous friends; it had been Shanil’s responsibility to
cover for her. Shanil hated being her
alibi and the thought of ‘being caught out’ by non-matching stories made her
feel sick. Many times Shanil told Jade
that she would blackmail her but Jade always had total faith in her older
sister and knew she would never tell on her.
It just was not in Shanil’s character.
Knowing that her younger sister had such powers over her made Shanil
furious.

At work Shanil plodded through the day as though she were in
a world of her own. She was in a
complete daze, only doing things she was told otherwise just sitting at her
desk staring into mid air. Her working
day had been very simple and she decided to leave work earlier than usual.

It was the usual routine
when she got home. She helped her sister
and her mother prepare supper clean up the house and wash the dishes. They made sure everything was ready for her
father in the morning as he always left the house in the early hours. Once everything had been completed it was
almost half-past eight.

At approximately half-past nine the girls heard a tap on
their kitchen window. Jade, holding a
cup of coffee in her hand smiled, “The midnight callers are here.” ......

If you like what you've read, please do let me know. The novel is about 100,000 words and I am hoping to find a publisher in the future.